But he’d also made mistakes that we had spent years pretending didn’t matter.
Vanessa was six years older than me.
Our father had married her mother, Diane, when they were young. The marriage ended before I was born, and several years later he married my mother, Elise.
By the time I was old enough to understand what divorce meant, Vanessa was already spending alternate weekends at our house.
To me, she was the exciting older sister who painted my fingernails and let me borrow her bracelets.
I adored her.
She taught me how to ride a bicycle without training wheels.
She helped me memorize multiplication tables.
When I was nine, she spent an entire afternoon making a cardboard castle for my birthday because I’d become obsessed with fairy tales.
I never considered that her visits meant she had to leave another home behind.
Or that the father I saw every morning was someone she waited to see.
Grandma Margaret had understood that difference.
So had Aunt Patricia.
And, apparently, so had Vanessa.
“Your father tried,” Grandma said quietly. “But there were times when he should have tried harder.”
I looked at her.
“What times?”
Patricia hesitated.
Then she said, “Do you remember Vanessa’s high-school graduation exhibition?”
I shook my head.
“I was twelve.”
“Exactly.”
She explained that Vanessa had won a regional art award in her final year of high school. The school organized a special evening exhibition, and Robert promised he would attend.
But that afternoon, I became ill.
I remembered the hospital visit.
A high fever.
Difficulty breathing.
My mother sitting beside me through the night.
I’d been diagnosed with pneumonia.
What I hadn’t known was that Dad had promised to attend Vanessa’s exhibition that same evening.
